


like a dog inspires a rabbit

by glittagal333



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Deaths, Nightmares, Other, SPOILERS for the newest episode, i need to stop w/ the tags, it's a lot of things, it's sort of a ship thing and it's not?, this is like idk man, we could have had it allll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 13:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6052720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittagal333/pseuds/glittagal333
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He feels himself being tugged, but it’s too late – his finger just keeps squeezing the trigger, the sound of gunfire a sickening relief because as long as he can’t hear anything else except it, he can pretend that nothing’s wrong."</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a dog inspires a rabbit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [diplomatsson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/diplomatsson/gifts).



> HEY KIDS. WASN'T THE LATEST EPISODE OF THE WALKING DEAD JUST SO MUCH FUN.
> 
> I have no idea what this was going to be, or ended up as, but man, I thought Ronnie was gonna be redeemed and not, well, you know.  
> So I wrote it. I wrote a thing. I don't know what I think of it.
> 
> This also doubles as a very late birthday present for my sister. This totally isn't what you originally asked for, but I hope you like it nonetheless.
> 
> Also... did they actually refer to him as Ronnie in the show, or did I just imagine that? Because he's totally referred to as Ronnie in the entirety of this. Whoops.

Even with the continuous chaos that refused to be ignored going on around them, Ronnie’s entire world just stops.

He’s not even looking properly at what’s happening. It’s just playing over and over again in his head, thoughts whiting out sight, mind desperately clinging to the last moments when his mother and his brother were whole.  
Refusing to see what they were becoming. Less and less and less of the people they used to be, white skin dyed dramatic reds and deep plums, pieces of the people he loved he never wanted to see being exposed—  
  
The _insides_ —  
  
There’s nothing but a shrill ringing in his ears, and actual real-time sound is a buzz drowning underneath this noise. Very faintly, there’s screaming. Somebody yelling his name. Somebody yelling the names of the others he’s with.  
He’s barely registering they’re there. In his head, his mother is still there, and his brother is. If he removes himself enough, he can pretend that—  
  
~~_“Ronnie!”_~~  
  
Alexandria is still blue skies and a boredom that is blissful, despite everything, despite the built in aspects of his adolescence that makes him want to escape and rebel.  
His friends. Enid. The trials that only a teenage boy can face, those trivial and yet huge things—  
  
~~_“Ronnie, we need to move!”_~~  
  
And the walls, still tall and sturdy and standing, blocking out a reality that the world is falling apart around them, outside of their moat and castle. Outside of Alexandria, the only normal place left in a world now made up of survival and blood and nothingness.  
  
The sound of metal hitting the ground finally snaps him out of this dream-like trance. His glazed over eyes blink once, returning him to the hell that is this moment.  
They’re surrounded. Utterly, completely surrounded by walkers. His brother’s body is definitely gone now, torn into nothing but pools of blood and organs and intestines.  
  
His mother is still holding on to Carl’s hand whilst she’s being torn apart, and the boy is trying to stay calm but beginning to fail, because _he’s next_ if he can’t release his hand from that grip.  
  
Ronnie’s eyes finally find the source of the sound that brought him back here – a gun. Carl’s gun, on the ground. In the panic, nobody else seems to have noticed it.  
But he has.  
  
Rick is trying to hack off his mother’s dead, still hand when Ronnie picks up the firearm, eyes darting to Carl, to Rick, to Michonne, to the hordes of undead beginning to box them into their own little pocket of _last place I saw them alive_.  
He takes the safety off. Carl, Rick, Michonne, hordes of undead, _last place I saw them alive_.  
  
Considers what would happen if he were to kill one of the above groups.  
Carl.  
Rick.  
Michonne.  
Hordes of undead.  
  
He can feel his eyes glazing over again, trying to block out everything, anything, this decision, even, though he wants to make it badly, more than anything.  
  
Maybe he should just close his eyes and pull the trigger. Let fate decide. He’s probably going to die anyway. They’re all going to die.  
There’s no point. It doesn’t matter who he kills. His mother is dead. His brother is dead. Deanna is dead, and with her, Alexandria will probably die, too—  
  
“ ~~ _Ronnie! You need to_~~ shoot it!”  
  
Okay. Sure. He can do that. Nothing left to lose at this point, right? His hand’s shaking, but he can still pull a trigger, no problem. He’s not really seeing everything around him correctly, but it’s fine. It’s fine, fine, fine.  
  
One gunshot rings through the air. The sound is louder than he remembers, strangely enough, and brings him back to reality long enough to realise that he’s missed.  
  
“Forget it! We just need to move!” a voice that he thinks is Michonne’s snaps, though it’s all panicked and not exactly angry like she usually sounds. “Kid, come on! Let’s go!”  
  
His mother is dead. His brother is dead. They’re dead, and they’re still surrounded, and _we just need to move_ isn’t a viable option right now. He needs to—  
  
“Ronnie! ~~_Come on!_~~ ”  
  
Fight now or die trying. He wants to kill all of them, really. Emptying the entire chamber of bullets in the gun should do it, even if he can’t really make heads or tails of the situation.  
  
“ _ ~~We have to go! Come on,~~_ Ronnie!”  
  
That’s Carl’s voice. Those are Carl’s hands shaking him, desperately trying to pull his body and get him to move.  
Ronnie manages to focus a little and sees Carl’s face. The last person who got to hold his mother. The person Enid had picked over him. The person he’d tried to kill before already.  
  
Why the hell did he still care about him?  
  
“You,” it’s the first thing Ronnie has said in what feels like forever. His mouth is dry. It comes out cracked and a lot weaker than he would have liked. “We’re going to die.”  
  
He’s very aware of being closed in on by several walkers. He still has a gun in his hand. There’s still a chance to do any number of things.  
Kill the walkers. Kill Carl. Kill himself. He very shakily lifts his hand up again, firearm aiming behind Carl at the undead that would soon sink their teeth into their young, warm skin.  
  
“Ronnie, ~~_wait—!_~~ ”  
  
He feels himself being tugged, but it’s too late – his finger just keeps squeezing the trigger, the sound of gunfire a sickening relief because as long as he can’t hear anything else except it, he can pretend that nothing’s wrong.  
  
He can disappear back into that glazed eyes, blue skies Alexandria-is -fine state again.  
He doesn’t hear Carl scream. He doesn’t hear anything.  
No, as soon as the chamber’s all emptied he blacks out and returns to his life before Rick Grimes and his people, before his father was killed.  
  
Before everything went wrong.  
  
  
  


“Wh— ...  
  
about that—?”  
  
It filters in and out, the talk about him when they think he’s unconscious. Which means he’s alive. Or maybe he’s dead, and this is the afterlife, and he’s not ready to open his eyes and accept it yet.  
So he keeps his eyes closed, slips in and out of awareness of things around him. Doesn’t really want to hear what they have to say about him.  
  
Though he does wonder what happened, in the end. Who’s alive. Who’s dead.  
If any of it is his fault.  
  
“Went comple—  
  
... don’t know if we can—”  
  
“Freaked out— ... lost _everyone_ ... needs to just—”  
  
“... – to _Carl_ , hm? He could— ... all be—”  
  
“Easy enough to—... push comes to shove.”  
  
He has endless dreams, and nightmares. He relives the deaths of his mother and brother over and over and over again, his mind filling in blanks that his eyes had refused to see at the time. Sometimes the walkers turn on him next, and he watches, screams, as Rick and Carl and Michonne simply leave him to die.  
Sometimes they turn on those three next instead of him. It feels good to watch them die.  
  
And then there’s a particular variation of the dream that crops up every now and then – where, with both his shaky aim and dissociation with the situation as a whole, he knocks a few walkers out and then shoots Carl right in the face. Right in the eye.  
  
He can’t tell if it’s an accident or not. In some dreams, it feels deliberate, and in others, it feels like an accident, and he drops the gun right afterwards.  
  
He wonders if Carl is dead. Probably. Who survives a shot to the face like that?  
  
“—Going to wake up? It’s not like he—”  
  
“He just dropped after—”  
  
“Wait. I think he’s going to—”  
  
It’s not that he chooses to open his eyes – it’s more like they so of their own accord, and the sudden assault of light really makes him wish he had control over that previous action. It burns, and he cries out in a feeble fashion that nonetheless makes him feel the discomfort of his very dry throat, and that in turn brings on a coughing fit that feels like it’s trying to tear every piece of lining inside of his neck off.  
  
“Woah, easy, easy!” a voice he recognises as Denise’s says. “You’re finally awake. Thank God. Uh, here, you need some water. Definitely.”  
  
Ronnie stares at the plastic cup being offered to him like someone’s very honestly asking him to drink poison, eyes wide, breathing erratic. He manages to sit up with a great deal of effort using limbs that aren’t awake yet despite Denise’s vocalised concerns.  
  
“What—what happened?” he croaks. His eyes dart around, and he sees people, survivors. A lot of them, actually. No way. No way they all survived this, no way no way—  
  
“I’m still dreaming,” he decides aloud, straining voice beginning to panic. “You’re all—you should all be dead. You should all be _dead_ —!”  
  
A firm hand pushes him on to his back again in a rather ungentle fashion. As much as he wants to, he’s still too weak to fight back. All he can do is feel tears of protest falling from the corners of his eyes.  
  
“Ronnie,” Rick’s gaze is intense, and his voice like a rumble of thunder on the horizon, beckoning a storm to fall all over the land. “Take it easy.”  
  
Ronnie stares up at him, holding his gaze despite being terrified and confused by the man being at his bedside at all. His mom should be here.  
But she’s—  
  
“My mom,” he whispers, a question, a plea to which he already knows the answer, but it’s already been said and he can’t unsay it. “S-Sam, and my mom, they’re—”  
  
The looks on both Rick and Denise’s faces confirm it. The brief, stupid flicker of hope in the back of his mind is crushed with a boot.  
He wants to go back, back to that place he’d been when he was asleep, when he had the gun in his hand, tries to will this world away but reality refuses to budge.  
  
“You... you need to drink something. Please.” Denise offers the plastic cup again, and Rick releases the hold on his chest. His body is begging him to take it, but his mind is in tatters that he’s still trying to put back together.  
He can’t. He can’t he can’t he can’t. Everything is too much.  
  
“Leave me alone,” his voice is shaking. He wishes he could sound as loudly upset as he is inside of his head. “I can’t... I’m not—”  
  
“We’ll go.” Rick nods, despite the look on Denise’s face that’s screaming this is not a good idea. He gestures for the makeshift doctor to follow him out as he heads for the door, which she very reluctantly does when she realises neither party is budging from the decision they’ve made.  
  
But before the door closes behind them, he overhears a ruckus in the hallway.  
  
“Is he awake?”  
  
“You shouldn’t be out of bed, Carl!”  
  
“I want to see him.”  
  
“I don’t think he’s really ready yet—”  
  
Ronnie manages to once again sit himself up, squinting at the shapes past the crack of the door that’s still open.  
He knows he’s there. But he can’t see him.  
  
“Look, he’s been out longer than you. It might take time for him to... receive people,” he can hear Denise explain. “Everything’s only coming back to him now. And your dad’s right, you shouldn’t be up yet.”  
  
“Come on! I won’t be long or anything!”  
  
“Carl, get back to bed. Now.”  
  
“ _Wait!_ ” Ronnie exclaims as loudly as his still dry throat will allow him to, which hushes the argument in the hallway.  
  
The door opens further, and Carl steps into the room, staring at Ronnie’s bed with one eye.  
One eye.  
The other is covered by a mess of white bandages that make up an eyepatch. Behind Carl, Rick and Denise hover in some sort of anticipation just outside the door.  
  
Neither says anything for a while. They just stare.  
  
That was just a dream, right? He can’t have really shot Carl. Or did he? Maybe he did. Maybe he really is still dreaming. Maybe they really all are dead, and this is just another horribly realistic product of his mind whilst he still recovers.  
  
“Ronnie,” Carl finally says, taking another step towards him. “You... you’re okay.”  
  
No. Not at all. He doesn’t voice this, though. He just nods, watches Carl inch closer and closer towards his bedside. Rick and Denise don’t move from their spot outside the door.  
  
By the time Carl makes it over to his side properly, another word has yet to fill the second silence between them. Ronnie stares endlessly at where his other eye should be, mind trying to pick fact from fantasy.  
Did he shoot him? Did he not? Maybe something else happened, something after he blacked out.  
  
“You... your...” the entire sentence never makes it out of his mouth, but Carl seems to understand him enough to put it together.  
  
“It’s okay,” it sounds a little forced. “You freaked out. Missed your mark. I should have taken the gun from you.”  
  
The memory’s trying to piece itself together as soon as it’s said, but it’s not coming together. Ronnie still isn’t entirely sure that what’s happening is real.  
  
“I... shot you?”  
  
“Yeah. You shot me.”  
  
Ronnie swallows hard, finally relenting and taking a gulp of water from the plastic cup that Denise had tried to give him already after realising saliva wasn’t enough to coat his throat.  
It wasn’t poison or anything. Obviously.  
Carl studies him quietly but intently, trying to find any sort of give in his demeanour.  
  
“Why?” Ronnie asks out of the blue.  
  
“Why? Why what?”  
  
“Why didn’t you just leave me? Why did you—why did you keep trying to—?” his voice cracks and he spits a swear, feels more tears streaking his face. “Why do you still care about me? I _hated_ you. I tried to _kill_ you.”  
  
_A part of me still wanted to, when our backs were against the wall._ Ronnie wonders that if his sight and mind were his own back there, if he would have—  
  
“I wasn’t going to leave you to die, Ronnie. I’m not like that. And you,” Carl pauses, casts his eye downward. “You’d just lost your mom, and Sam. I... we couldn’t just...”  
  
They’re both suddenly very aware of Rick and Denise still occupying the area, even if not in immediate eye line.  
  
“We’re in this together now,” he decides on. “You, and me. ~~_And the others._~~ We have to have each others’ backs.”  
  
Ronnie’s mind manages to pick out things when the rest of his collective consciousness begins to stray elsewhere. He’s still not all there, even though he’s nodding at what’s being said to him.  
  
“Ronnie? You okay?”  
  
_No._  
  
“My head... it’s still a little funny.”  
  
“Oh. Sorry, I should let you rest—”  
  
“Don’t,” Ronnie’s voice is quiet, yet shrill somehow at the same time, and it startles Carl and the two adults still outside of the room. “Don’t leave me alone. I keep... it keeps playing again, in my head.”  
  
He’s still trying to remember shooting Carl. The hideous events of that night keep playing over and over because somewhere there has to be a clue, amongst the loss of the last of his family, but seeing his mother and his brother die again and again and again is not doing good things for his psyche.  
  
“Okay,” Carl seems a little reluctant, but manages a sort-of smile that seems genuine. “It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”  
  
And he does stay. They don’t say a word to each other. It drags on and on and on, and eventually Rick and Denise decide to leave them to this slightly suffocating silence.  
Ronnie’s exhausted mind slips halfway between reality and fantasy at varying intervals, unsure if he’s actually conversing or just dreaming conversation, really. He blinks and the room is empty. He blinks again and Carl is still there.  
  
He blinks again and that night’s surroundings are back, loud and damp and dark and very real, but he never makes his fear outwardly known. He watches walkers closing in on him and Carl, the gun still in his hand, and then shoots erratically at everything around him.  
He finally passes out and remembers shooting Carl.  
  
  
  


He has a dream where Michonne stabs him right through the chest from behind. His mother is calling his name even though she’s being torn apart, even though she’s definitely already dead. Maybe he can hear her because he’s finally dead, too.  
  
“We’re safe now, Ronnie. You and me, and Sam and your father. We can all be together again.”  
  
“Mom?”  
  
“Come here, Ronnie. Take my hand. Come with me. Let’s be a family again—”  
  
He reaches out to her cold, stiff, lifeless hand – but when he finally touches her skin, he can’t hear her voice anymore. It’s a deafening static sound, and her flesh falls off at the lightest touch.  
  
He can’t hear himself screaming. All he hears is gunshots.  
  
  
  


When he finally wakes up again, night has fallen. The light of a lamp dimly illuminates the room, and he doesn’t need to actually look over to know that Carl is still there. Actually using his eyes reveals the other boy leafing through a comic book in an armchair pulled up beside his bed.  
  
Carl’s gaze flickers to Ronnie as soon as he moves to sit himself up.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Ronnie doesn’t say anything, just nods and stares at the wall parallel from his position, wiping a tear that had slid from one of his eyes without him realising it. The sound of his shaky breathing seems loud amongst the crushing silence.  
  
“It gets better,” Carl returns to reading, but is definitely addressing him. “It’s horrible at first, I’m not gonna lie. You’re going to keep seeing the same situation again and again, wondering what you could have done differently. Wishing your mind was working fast enough at the time to save them. You’re going to hate yourself, and then everyone else around you for trying to help you move on. But it does get better. Eventually.”  
  
Ronnie stares at him, eyes beginning to well up with tears, wondering how the hell Carl knew—  
  
“You were talking in your sleep.”  
  
Oh.  
  
“I know you hate me, Ronnie. I don’t really know why, but just because you’re a pain in the ass doesn’t mean I’m not going to try and help you. Like I said, we’re in this together now.”  
  
“... I don’t hate you,” a beat. “Not anymore.”  
  
“You don’t have to fake liking me—”  
  
“I’m being serious. Honest,” Ronnie’s voice cracks, and he swallows hard. His throat is dry again. “I don’t hate you, Carl. It’s too hard. Everything is... too hard.”  
  
Carl really feels like he should reassure him here, but the words aren’t forming in his head. Ronnie speaks again before he can try and come up with something, anyway.  
  
“I finally... remembered. Shooting you.”  
  
“It was an accident. You didn’t mean to.”  
  
(He hoped, anyway.)  
  
“I’m sorry, Carl.”  
  
“Don’t. Don’t be sorry. Just,” a deep inhale. “promise to have my back in the future.”  
  
They finally look at each other properly for the first time since Ronnie had woken up, and he faces the fact that Carl’s disfigurement is really his fault, because he did do it. He shot Carl. He shot him right in the face.  
Carl’s not looking at him properly, for a moment. Not in the eyes. Maybe he hasn’t gotten the hang of it yet, Ronnie muses. Having one eye to do the work of two—  
  
He tenses when Carl reaches up and brushes away a tear from his face with his thumb.  
  
“Promise me.” he repeats, voice a little softer this time.  
  
It feels like a huge weight is finally leaving Ronnie’s person, though he doesn’t quite understand what exactly the weight is. Maybe it’s finally realising what he had done. Maybe it’s knowing that the worst of everything is over.  
Maybe it’s knowing that somebody’s going to have his back, despite everything terrible that he had done. And that’s enough, for the moment. It’s a small relief, in the grand scheme of things—  
  
“I promise.”  
  
But for now, it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: An original ending for this was going to be that the entire thing was a fantasy and he really did get stabbed by Michonne, exactly as what happened in canon, but then I remembered that fic is for escaping the trauma that shows inflict on you, not empowering it.
> 
> Also: LET ME KNOW IF I NEED TO ADD TAGS! A whole lot of mental/mind related things happen in this and I'm not sure if they need to be tagged or not, or what to tag them as.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr here: http://bowdowntomama.tumblr.com


End file.
